Moroccan-American rapper and songwriter French Montana has dedicated his new documentary ‘For Khadija’ to his mum and other immigrant mums who sacrificed for their kids in the U.S.
The rapper whose birth name is Karim Kharbouch’s mother migrated from Morocco to America when he was 13 years old. After his father moved back to the North African country, his mother had to get three jobs in order to support the family.
“We overstayed [our] visas,” Montana recalled in a TMZ Live interview.“My father was trying to create an opportunity for us to live the American dream, but he didn’t succeed at that. He got tired of it. He wanted to go back to Africa and live like a king. He told my mom ‘We can take all the kids and leave French here.’ My mother said ‘I’m not going to leave my son here,’ so he said ‘You can stay with him.’ He felt like she betrayed him.”
Montana added “He left me, my mother, my two little brothers. None of us spoke English. I couldn’t get a job, couldn’t go to school. I didn’t have paperwork. The only thing to do was to hustle and hit the streets. It was something that happened by mistake and turned into a miracle.”
Before its official release in November 2024, ‘For Khadija’ was first premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last year. The documentary has been eight years in the making, partially because the process of getting his mother a green card and reuniting her with family in Morocco for the first time in 25 years.
Commenting on U.S immigration laws and collaborating with Laura Trump, daughter in-law of President-Elect, Donald Trump, he said in his TMZ interview “I’m not too involved in politics, Laura Trump was somebody I knew on a personal level but honestly, I don’ t like the immigration laws. Hopefully we can do something about that,” he added. “That’s all a conversation, something I would have to speak to [Laura about] to try and talk some sense into him [Trump].”
